This invention relates to automatic electrical controls, and more particularly to automatic electrical controls for the random sequential selection of certain desired operations.
Conventionally, closed circuit television (CCTV) systems have been used in business establishments as a psychological deterrent to shop-lifting and pilferage. Deterrence is achieved by locating CCTV monitors in locations where they can be readily viewed by the public, and by the mounting of CCTV cameras which provide selected scenes of the establishment for public viewing on the monitors.
The effectiveness of such CCTV cameras surveillance systems tends to diminish as time passes, and has been improved somewhat in some installations by providing rotational capability to the camera housings for horizontal scanning and operating it by remote control from a monitoring station. When only manual, such remote control is normally prohibitively expensive in terms of labor. When automated, the remote control has consisted only in an obviously automatic scanning arrangement in which the camera housings oscillate between stops at the ends of a preset horizontal arc either in steps or in uninterrupted travel through the span of the arc as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,535,442. Such a system, although superior to one having static camera housings, has predictable aspects and hence also diminishes in effectiveness as time passes.
The object of the present invention is to substantially improve the effectiveness of a CCTV camera surveillance system by providing automatic random sequential scanning capabilities.
It is also an object of this invention to provide an automatic control system for producing any type of random sequential operation.